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Why are lithium prices collapsing?

internationalbanker.com

301–310 of 524 posts

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are people confusing lithium with cobalt? Where 70% of it comes from the Congo.

Yes. And I guess some people insist on the confusion on purpose. It doesn't matter how many times people point it out, the confusion keeps happening.

I agree that it's deliberate, and I extend that to any sort of mining - after all it comes from the stance of misinformed "environmentalists" not being able to tell the difference because any of that type of action is bad

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can’t believe that actual people are that invested in burning hydrocarbons. Yeah, it's weird, right? Why _are_ people so invested in burning natgas and coal and other hydrocarbons for large-scale power generation when a plethora of proven near-zero-emissions alternatives exist? From a climate-change perspective, banning natgas cookstoves is a few pennies saved on like a thousand dollar expenditure. It's similar t…

There will be no “real dent”. You have to make small changes along with big changes. And banning natural gas piped infrastructure is an easy win. 1. No one is banning natural gas stoves. You can still use a natural gas stove. You just need to bring your own cylinder like most of the world and half the food YouTubers already do. 2. Natural gas stoves have significant indoor pollution impact. It’s a huge benefit even o…

> Natural gas infrastructure is expensive, dangerous and unnecessary.

It’s been used and operated safely for hundreds of years in cities on the East Coast. The idea that it’s dangerous is simply FUD to scare people into spending $1000 on a future piece of e-waste to cook their food.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They put out less BTUs (9k vs 15k-25k from a high end gas burner) How much of that makes it into the pan, and how much is waste heat?

The reason gas is superior is due to heat recovery time. Recovery time is the time it takes to reach temperature after adding food to a pan. Gas is superior to all forms of electric in recovery time. There simply is /more energy/ in a cubic foot of gas compared to what a home electric circuit can deliver in the same time frame. It’s science, plain and simple. The practical effect is food spends less time steaming, so…

Induction kicks the crap out of gas for energy delivered to pan. It's not even close.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They understand that the contempt is merited. It only makes them more angry.

Thank you for proving my point. The contempt is real, not perceived.

This contempt is the flip side of the freedoms granted by the constitution. The government is not allowed to enforce certain behaviors. That social control is left to the public itself.

The bizarrely irrational behavior from the red states doesn't even make sense in its own terms. If this doesn't merit contempt, nothing does.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#306
post #111

The space is saturated with anti-EV FUD.

> A legacy of the Pinochet era in Chile is the privatisation of minerals and water, which gives companies ownership of those resources in an area. While mining operations squeeze this already dry region even drier, communities lose their access to potable water, leaving them relying on tankers to deliver it. “We used to have a river before that now doesn’t exist. There isn’t a drop of water,” says Rivera. “And not on…

What you just described is a failure of government to setup appropriate water rights. It has nothing to do with mining. The same exact thing happens with agriculture.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course prices are based on speculation about possible supply and demand, nobody has a crystal ball that can tell them “actual” supply and demand. Exactly, no one has such a crystal ball. And this actually generally applies not just to future supply and demand, but even to the past: it's actually impossible to measure supply and demand across any significant industry, to check whether prices matched it or not. An…

> You might expect that if you believe in the law of supply and demand, but as we were discussing, that is not how prices are actually formed, and anyone betting based on observed supply and demand (to the extent that it is actually possible to observe them) will be beat in general by others who are betting based on current speculation, which is how prices are actually formed. But we do see prices approach optimal. Y…

> But we do see prices approach optimal.

Where do you see that? What does it even mean, how can you objectively tell what is the optimal price for a good or service, so that you can later say that the market converged to it?

For example, is 1000$ the optimal price for an iPhone? Or is it simply the price Apple chose? If they sold it for 500$, would they make more or less money? How do you know?

> And clearly markets do follow the law of supply demand at the macro level, when long periods of time are considered, otherwise commodity pricing would be entirely arbitrary and wouldn’t in anyway reflect the value of the commodity to society at large.

I would argue that it often is, at least for many non-essential products. The price of many non-essential goods is much much higher than the price of essentials, even when those non-essential goods are cheap and easy to manufacture (say, softdrinks or many cosmetics). The price of most energy resources is largely controlled by non-market forces, even on the face of it.

Also, why restrict this discussion to commodities? If we switch to investments, the price of stocks is quite obviously arbitrary as well, with "market makers" often controlling the allowed prices (or at least, price volatility) for stock. The price of real-estate is often determined to a large extent by the price of borrowing, and that is quite explicitly set by banks and the central bank based on nothing related to supply and demand. Services are even more complex, with huge variations in price based on entirely subjective factors.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They put out less BTUs (9k vs 15k-25k from a high end gas burner) How much of that makes it into the pan, and how much is waste heat?

The reason gas is superior is due to heat recovery time. Recovery time is the time it takes to reach temperature after adding food to a pan. Gas is superior to all forms of electric in recovery time. There simply is /more energy/ in a cubic foot of gas compared to what a home electric circuit can deliver in the same time frame. It’s science, plain and simple. The practical effect is food spends less time steaming, so…

I have an induction wok, it cost a couple hundred dollars on Amazon, heats up instantly and goes up to very high temps.

I do not have the problem you are describing.

> Gas is superior to all forms of electric in recovery time.

This is really going to be dependent on which stoves we are comparing, along with the type of pan being used.

> There simply is /more energy/ in a cubic foot of gas compared to what a home electric circuit can deliver in the same time frame. It’s science, plain and simple.

Science as I alluded to in my previous comment, would account for waste heat. Which is where a significant amount of the energy of a gas stove goes.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course prices are based on speculation about possible supply and demand, nobody has a crystal ball that can tell them “actual” supply and demand. Exactly, no one has such a crystal ball. And this actually generally applies not just to future supply and demand, but even to the past: it's actually impossible to measure supply and demand across any significant industry, to check whether prices matched it or not. An…

The pundit's claims are part of the speculation. If you speculated that the pundit's words would matter, you'd short or sell out grain, making the pundit's words matter. Supply and demand are only sometimes good measures of people actually using or producing these products (and when they fail bubbles occur), but are always good measures of the spending of both people actually using the product, and the investors buyi…

> In any case, as the investors buy the product they eventually have to sell it, meaning over the long run demand and supply are good measures of "actual" usage and production.

That's not necessarily true. It depends on the product and industry, but it's absolutely possible to horde products for long periods of time (see diamonds and gold) or to choose to destroy products rather than sell them at a price you don't like (see public transportation in many US cities in the 50s, or fancy food items).

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By, for example, deliberately delaying delivery while owning a significant segment of the available commodity, such as Goldman Sachs did with aluminum a decade ago. [1], while simultaneously selling derivatives based on the very commodities they were manipulating. To the best of my knowledge, there were no consequences - if anyone knows of a financial penalty or change to law or regulations, please share! 1. https://…

I agree that there is concern of malfeasance in that scenario, but I was under the impression the context of the discussion was solely around the purchase and sale of contracts for the commodities (i.e. betting on the future price of a commodity), not manipulation of the actual supply and demand.

When the same legal entities are in a position to do both (participate in the futures market and manipulate supply and demand) I do not see how or why you would try to make such a distinction.

It feels like you're trying to say, "this market would work fine if it weren't for those meddling bad actors" as a response to "the problem is the bad actors".

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